The neighborhood feud over whether a small residential street in an affluent Augusta Road community should be closed to one-way traffic has vaulted into a broader debate over how equipped the city of Greenville is to keep up with its exploding growth and development.

It's a bit of theater, to some degree — no more evident than during a packed public hearing last week where special stickers were handed out to delineate sides and speakers talked both of impending childbirth and being post-menopausal as excuses to exceed three-minute time limits.

But also at the heart of the issue is concerns over how commercial development brings traffic to neighborhood streets and whether the process to bring balance has been fair.

In lead to a vote scheduled for Monday, the latest move is an exhaustive effort by residents on either side to comb through thousands of pages of documents detailing every mention city government has made about the issue since its genesis last spring.

The result — 3,249 pages of mostly emails released by the city through the Freedom of Information Act — paints a historical picture of just how the fate of a small city street ignited so much passion.

The emails show a pattern of miscommunication by the city's staff, residents confused about the process and at least one council member taking a lead role in advocating the city's staff on how best to manage the traffic.

The city's chief executive has accepted blame for how the issue has been mishandled while neighbors spar with one another with no definitive path forward.

"It's not the Greenville way for people to have so much angst over an issue," said Mayor Knox White, noting that an effort to calm traffic has never been so controversial.

The McPherson Lane barrier was meant to be a temporary measure to calm traffic but residents want it to be permanent. A construction worker moves it aside to perform work on a new development.(Photo: Eric Connor)

The city will vote Monday on whether to allow engineers to permanently barricade one lane of McPherson Lane to inbound traffic from the busy Augusta Street commercial corridor, where a shopping center is being expanded next to the neighborhood.

The McPherson residents say they were promised a solution in exchange for not opposing a new development. Their neighbors around them say closing the city street that serves a broader community is selfish and that they haven't been allowed input.

No matter the outcome, the decision could lead to legal action, residents say — unless the city is successful in its current efforts to find a compromise.

But how did it come to this?

Neighborhood feels growth pressure

The dispute over the one-way barricade dates back to last April. That’s when the city’s Planning Commission voted on a request by a developer to renovate and expand the shopping center at the busy intersection of East Faris Road and Augusta Street.

The next street over, McPherson Lane, runs alongside the other side of the center where Moe’s Southwest Grill and the Verizon Store are the most-prominent tenants.

The developer needed a rezoning request approved to allow him to tear down two duplexes to make way for new required parking spaces.

McPherson neighbors expressed concerns over traffic impact, but during a public hearing of the city's Planning Commission on the rezoning, they didn't oppose the request.

That's because they said they believed the city considered a solution to the traffic impact to be turning McPherson Lane into a one-way street.

In May, an orange-and-white barrier went up as construction got started, and McPherson residents believed the closure was permanent. But months later, residents across a broader area of the neighborhood objected and asked why they weren't notified that a public street would be closed.

The city took a step back and told the McPherson residents to enter into the city's multi-step traffic calming process, which would allow only residents of a four-block area to vote on a recommendation to close the street.

By the beginning of this year, the outcry from the broader neighborhood was at full pitch — but McPherson neighbors were already well on their way through the traffic calming process, which last month culminated in a super-majority vote to close the street to inbound traffic.

Now, a week after hearing the passions of dozens of residents on either side, the council must figure out what to do.

On the table is a simple vote: Close McPherson one way or not.

Email trail

The litany of documents — requested through the Freedom of Information Act by resident Brian Hungerford and shared by both sides — tells the story through emails.

In April 2017, the developer, David Stone, shared with the city's economic development and engineering staff a proposal endorsed by McPherson neighbors to close the street one way.

The developer wrote that the proposal had his support and that of former City Councilman David Sudduth, who lives on McPherson and would lose a re-election bid two months later. He served until the end of last year.

The residents filed a petition with the city for a one-way closure. The developer asked that the one-way solution not be contingent on the rezoning decision but be explored for feasibility.

The Planning Commission considered the request, and while meeting minutes reflect only a general discussion of traffic concerns and not a one-way solution, a subsequent letter from a commission member to the neighborhood expressed his impression that the one-way option was understood to be on the table.

In May, City Engineer Dwayne Cooper drafted a letter a one-way supporter to say that the one-way option wouldn't be a sufficient solution and that the city needed to study traffic both before and after the shopping center work's completion.

Sudduth asked the city staff the status of the neighborhood's request after a month of no response. In an email to a McPherson resident, Sudduth wrote that he couldn't support the rezoning request without traffic concerns being addressed and said, "I'd like to use the rezoning as leverage to get the one-way street approved."

In an email to Sudduth, Public Works Director Mike Murphy wrote that the engineering staff couldn't recommend a one-way street.

Sudduth responded firmly to Murphy and included City Manager John Castile in his response.

"Thanks for following up," Sudduth wrote. "However, I strongly disagree with this approach. As you know, I live on McPherson and even have a speed bump in front of my house. The traffic speeds coming down McPherson are excessive and cut-through traffic onto Cothran (Street) has increased over time. Rezoning the Stone property to allow more parking will only make both issues worse."

He went on to write, "I cannot support any rezoning of the Stone property to add more parking without addressing the existing traffic issues. Just know... every neighbor in a four block area signed that petition. Let's get this right. And thanks for letting me vent a little."

A day later, the city's traffic engineer shared the results of a traffic study that showed "very low" traffic volumes, leading the city to conclude that most drivers are residents.

But three days later, Sudduth emailed a resident to say the city planned to approve the one-way street.

A week later, the orange and white barrier appeared and Murphy emailed his bosses to say the job was complete and "we will continue to monitor."

The day after the barrier went up, an assistant city engineer emailed the developer: "The one-way was implemented... and is intended to be permanent unless problems arise. The decision was made last week in a meeting between the city engineer and public works director."

The same day, a staff member in the economic development department asked the assistant engineer, "What's the story? Did we permanently convert this to one-way, or are we testing it?"

The assistant engineer responded, "It's permanent and was implemented last Friday" and wrote that the city would ask the developer to construct a traffic calming island that would enforce one-way traffic.

The same day, the Planning Commission's recommendation for approval of the rezoning was forwarded to the city manager — but no mention of the one-way street option was made.

In June, the City Council approved the rezoning unanimously, again with no mention of a one-way street as the solution to traffic concerns.

Reverse course

This is where McPherson residents have said they are confused: All along the impression was that the temporary barrier was permanent.

However, by September, residents beyond McPherson and nearby streets most affected by cut-through traffic began to object and asked for any evidence that there was a deal to make the street one way and questioned why no public meeting was held prior to closure.

The city then went back to McPherson residents and told them they needed to request the street closure through the city's traffic-calming process, which requires traffic studies, community votes and approval by city engineers — and in the particular case of a street closure, City Council approval.

In January, the city's traffic engineer, Holmes, emailed the neighborhood study committee formed as required under the calming process to say that the city would be building a sidewalk on McPherson. The engineer wrote that the city wanted the committee to have as much information as possible when voting on a solution.

A month later, the engineer emailed the committee an update of the public works director's position on a one-way solution.

"After reviewing the cost feasibility and public safety elements," the engineer wrote, "the city, regardless of the outcome of a neighborhood vote, will not allow the installation of a one-way."

The residents supporting the one-way responded in force, directly contacting City Council who then inquired what was going on.

In one email, the mayor asked the public works director why the one-way was ever installed.

"If the 'one-way' is not an option, why was it implemented in the first place?" White wrote. "I have believed that the normal traffic calming process would be followed — and that the neighborhood would vote on the recommendations of the study committee. Period."

In another email, White responds to a residents who ask if he had said that the one-way barrier was put in place to placate McPherson residents with no intention to keep it permanent.

"Absolutely not," the mayor wrote. "Our traffic staff has been the sole movers on this project — as they always are. They have had no consultation with me nor council. None at all — other than to follow normal traffic calming protocol."

'Miscommunication'

Asked about the message in an interview with The Greenville News, White said that it was his understanding that no council members had been involved. There was no council action or direction as a group, which is customary, he said.

"If a council member were doing something on the side, I wouldn't know," White said. "Traffic calming is supposed to be a hands-off affair, so that you don't have a thumb on the scale."

Sudduth, who served on the council for 12 years, told The News that he got involved when McPherson residents hadn't heard back from the city's staff about a petition to have a one-way solution.

Sudduth said the response was that there was no process to act on the petition.

"You can't just sit on the petition and not act on it," he said. "You've got to get back to the neighbors and tell them something. I got in, got involved, and I tried to help solve the problem. In this particular case, there wasn’t a clear and transparent process, and, frankly, that’s what confused everybody."

Sudduth said that he was very clear before his vote to approve the rezoning that he needed assurance that stormwater and traffic concerns would be addressed. He said he voted assuming the one-way option would be the solution.

"I thought that was the way it would be handled when I voted for the rezoning," Sudduth said. "I feel like I got the rug pulled out from under me, too."

From the administrative perspective, Castile told The News that the city's staff did not "initially put our best foot forward" and that "miscommunication occurred along the way."

"I am aware that some staff members believed the one-way was permanent," Castile said. "Often it is very difficult to speak with one voice as an organization. Obviously, some of the neighbors were left with that impression as well."

The installation of the plastic barricade was a "staff-level decision" that, because it was temporary, didn't require a public hearing, he said.

Castile said no political pressure has caused the staff to erect or remove the barrier.

Instead, the city staff was concerned about increased construction traffic during the shopping center renovation and saw the barrier as both a solution to that problem and a chance for a "trial run."

Last month, McPherson residents were ultimately allowed to vote on a one-way as an option, in addition to speed humps. The residents in the group voted by more than 75 percent for a one-way, so the issue has been elevated to the City Council because the council must vote on road closures.

However, residents across the larger span of the neighborhood said the committee that was allowed to vote covered too small an area and left them shut out.

City Councilman Wil Brasington, who defeated Sudduth in the district race, said that as the city's grows, leaders should consider whether the traffic calming process should be amended.

"It's clear to me that this whole thing could have been handled in a different and better manner," he said.

In the case of McPherson, Brasington said, "It probably makes more sense to have a larger voting area, or to have it as part of a different process."

Going forward, Sudduth said growth will continue to put pressure on neighborhoods and require new methods of dealing with it.

“This particular issue is very representative of what’s happening almost every day in neighborhoods," Sudduth said. "This is going to be an ongoing concern for a long time, and the city’s got to get ahead of it.”